Author's Note: I'm not sure if this counts as a fanfic,
a parody of a fanfic, a fanfic of a parody, or all of the above. Whatever
it is, I just had to write it.Needless to say, none of these characters are of my
creation, and any similarity to an actual television personality is entirely
intentional.March 2006. 5,200 words. -- C.

"Bloody hell," Ron said, looking up and down the gleaming
length of the Gryffindor table at the rows of empty golden plates and goblets.
"What's taking so long? I'm starving."

"Honestly, Ron," Hermione said, barely raising her head
from The Big Book of Insanely Complicated Spells. "You ate nineteen
Chocolate Frogs and seven Cauldron Cakes on the train. How can you still
be hungry?"

Just then, the Great Hall's babble of chatter quieted
to an excited ripple as Albus Dumbledore rose from his chair, his kindly
eyes twinkling behind half-moon spectacles.

Harry knew he was supposed to be paying attention as Dumbledore
went into his usual speech. But what was the use? By now, he knew all of
– and had broken most of – the school rules. The only thing that interested
him was the perennial question of who would be their Defense Against the
Dark Arts teacher this time.

He glanced along the seated row of professors. Snape was
there, sallow as ever, his lip curled in a sneer. Hagrid seemed more gigantic
than ever next to the diminutive Professor Flitwick. Seeing no new faces,
Harry let his gaze stray around the Great Hall. He spotted the pale, blond
figure of Draco Malfoy right away, smirking to his Slytherin cronies just
like always. Dislike curled through Harry like a snake.

Hermione elbowed him as Dumbledore said, "And now, before
we bring in our new crop of first-years, I have one very special introduction
to make."

A piercing, screeching cry made everyone look up. The
sky of the Great Hall was enchanted to mimic the sky outside, which tonight
was a star-spangled brilliance. Above them, from one of the openings that
usually admitted the school owls on their daily deliveries of mail, swept
a majestic eagle.

Students cried out, alarmed and impressed, as it circled
low over them with talons flashing in the light of the many candles. The
wind from its mighty wings ruffled their school robes and blew their hats
off their heads. Several people ducked. Neville Longbottom fell backwards
off his bench and landed flat on the floor.

As the massive, fierce bird passed over the Slytherins,
Malfoy's smirk vanished. He squeaked like a girl and dove under the table,
cowering there, while Crabbe and Goyle stared up openmouthed and stupid
as trolls.

With a final triumphant cry, the eagle veered toward Dumbledore.
As it backwinged and came in for a landing, there was a ripple of magic
and a flowing change. What touched down beside the Headmaster was no longer
an eagle at all.

"An Animagus!" Hermione gasped, dropping her book and
not even noticing.

No longer an eagle, but a man … though still every bit
as majestic and impressive. His tall, lean frame was draped in velvet robes
that perfectly complemented his unblemished complexion. He smoothed his
thick ink-black hair – which had not been disarranged in the slightest
– and raised one shrewd eyebrow as his piercing bird-of-prey gaze scanned
the room from behind thin wire-rimmed spectacles.

"Thank you, Professor Dumbledore," Professor Colbert said,
in a voice that rang with confidence and commanded instant respect. "I
know what you're all thinking. You're thinking oh, another one, wonder
how long this one will last?"

A murmur of agreement and apprehension went around the
room, which Professor Colbert silenced with a single raised hand.

"Well, kids," he said, "Put your wands away and close
those spellbooks, and get ready to be Sorted into the House of Truth!"

Harry didn't think anybody, himself included, really understood
what that meant, but it didn't stop them all from voicing a spontaneous
wild cheer.

Dumbledore cleared his throat, but Professor Colbert was
not finished. "You can forget your werewolves, your publicity hounds, your
one-eyed imposters. I've got something they didn't have. Something that
this school has, no offense to the Headmaster here, been lacking. You know
what it is? I'll tell you. Balls."

Professor McGonagall nearly fainted. Hagrid started to
roar with laughter but caught himself just in time. Snape's lip curled
even more, and he glared at Professor Colbert the way he might have glared
at Harry's own father, who had been Snape's rival.

"And not your Divination kind of crystal ones, either,"
Professor Colbert went on. "These babies aren't for gazing at, if you get
my drift. You can just tell that myopic mystic Trelawney to keep her predictions
… and her hands … to herself."

**

Like the teacher, the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom
was never the same from year to year. Harry wasn't sure what to expect
when he walked through the door for his first class with Professor Colbert,
but he had the feeling it wouldn't be like anything he'd seen in there
before.

He was right.

"Bloody hell," Ron said, thunderstruck.

The students who had been raised in Muggle households,
like Harry, were not quite as shocked as those who'd grown up with all-wizard
families, but Ron's outburst seemed to speak for them all as they filed
in. The dank stone walls were lost in shadow and highlighted by dramatic
ruby-red and sapphire-blue glows. Banners, flags and emblems billowed,
waved and flowed through the darkness.

Their usual rows of desks and chairs had been replaced
with a semicircle of rising tiers of seats facing a rounded dais, where
magically illuminated letters scrolled "Professor Colbert" across the bottom.
The teacher's desk stood upon the dais, glossy and modern. Tucked away
behind it was a large nest, suitable for the high rocky aerie of an eagle.

"Don't just stand there," Hermione chided everyone else,
as she moved to a seat in the front tier. There was a foldable writing
surface tucked down into the arm of the chair, and by the time the others
had begun to tentatively take their places, she'd already unfolded it and
gotten out a scroll and a quill to take notes.

Harry took a seat and continued looking around. He had
gotten so used to Hogwarts over the years that he now felt as unsure as
he had the first time Hagrid had led him into Diagon Alley, with its fantastic
array of shops.

To one side of the dais and desk was a large table, upon
which rested an item he recognized as a Pensieve, like the one Dumbledore
kept in his office. To the other was a section of wall featuring a blazing
fireplace and sets of bookshelves holding a fascinating array of items,
including several trophies and a scattering of little oddly-shaped dice.
There was a portrait of Colbert over the mantle, showing him impeccably
clad in a suit better than any that even the Minister of Magic owned, but
unlike the ones Gilderoy Lockhart had displayed, this portrait did not
preen with desperate narcissism.

Beside the desk was a peculiar structure that made Harry
think of the time his Aunt Petunia had hired a puppet show for his cousin
Dudley's birthday party. Not that Harry had been allowed to attend the
party. He'd watched through a keyhole while Dudley opened a pile of presents,
and instead of being invited to share the cake and ice cream, had only
been allowed to lick the residue off the top of the ice cream container.

Anyway, this structure was like a fancy version of the
wood-and-curtain stage the puppeteers had used to put on their show. Harry
wondered what it could be for, as he listened to the whispers and rustles
of his classmates getting settled.

Then, suddenly, Professor Colbert was there, at the desk.
It was like he'd materialized in front of them, or Apparated, though as
Hermione would be quick to tell anyone and everyone at any opportunity,
it was supposedly impossible to Apparate or Disapparate on the Hogwarts
grounds.

"The Dark Arts," he said. "If you believe what you read
in the papers, the entire wizarding world has got its robes in a bunch,
too scared to go to sleep at night because of the so-called Dark Arts.
And it's my job to teach you how to defend yourself against them. Well,
there's really only one thing you need to know."

He smiled self-deprecatingly and held up his palms. "Don't
worry, I'm not going to put myself out of a job by giving you the one quick
answer to all your problems. That would be stupid. Because the only way
to combat the Dark Arts, my fine young pupils, is with the stark, shining
light of Truthiness."

Hermione's hand shot up.

Colbert paused. "Miss … Granger, is it? I don't normally
like to be interrupted, Miss Granger."

She turned pink, and her hand sank like a timid mouse
retreating into its burrow.

"No, no," Colbert said. "You've already interrupted. Spit
it out."

"I … was … only going to ask," she ventured meekly, sounding
so unlike the Hermione they knew that the rest of them turned to gape at
her. "Um, about … Truthiness, Professor?"

"Go on," he said, with a curt nod.

Emboldened, Hermione's voice strengthened a little. "Is
it a spell, Professor? Like the Patronus Charm?"

Colbert's laugh was somehow warm, rich, rueful and condescending
all at once. "If only it were so simple," he said. "Believe me, Miss Granger,
I would love to be able to teach you one little spell … Expecto Truthium
… and all your troubles disappear. But this is the real world, missy. There's
more to Truthiness than a few magic words and wand wiggles."

Each student sat straighter as that raptor's gaze went
from Hermione to the rest of them in turn. It finally came to rest on Harry.

"After all," Professor Colbert said, "we can't all expect
just to be able to bounce Killing Curses off with the force of a mother's
love, now, can we?"

Harry gulped, and resisted the urge to smooth his unruly
bangs down over the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, the only visible
souvenir of the night his parents had died.

"What we need to be able to do," Colbert continued, returning
his attention to Hermione, "is not so much a matter of blocking hostile
spells, or countering jinxes, but of preventing them in the first place.
That's what Truthiness can do."

"Is it covered in our textbook?" she asked, with a worried
expression.

"Textbooks are for facts. Forget facts, Miss Granger.
Facts are what got us into this mess. Facts are the antithesis of Truthiness.
A fact, you know in your brain. Truthiness comes from the heart and the
gut."

"And the balls?" Seamus Finnegan blurted, then covered
his mouth as Lavender and Parvati made offended-old-maid noises.

"And the balls, damn straight," Professor Colbert said
without batting an eye. "You've got that right, sonny-boy. These so-called
Dark wizards? All brains. No balls. They're all cowards, and so they hide
it with a bunch of evil."

His tone took on a high, peevish, mocking whine. "Oh,
we're going to go pick on some Muggles, and we're going to tell ourselves
it's all in the interest of keeping the bloodlines pure but really it's
because they don't have magic and so they can't fight back! But we're still
too scared to do it openly, so we're going to wear masks."

On the side of the room where the Slytherins had gathered
in a sullen clump, Malfoy started to say something indignant and bit it
back when Colbert's head whipped around so that the professor's obsidian-sharp
eyes were fixed right on him.

"Something to add, Mr. Malfoy?" he asked.

"No," Malfoy mumbled.

"See what I mean?" Professor Colbert glanced around at
the others with an amused little shrug.

Malfoy sputtered but didn't dare protest.

"And they don't even have the balls to do their evil on
their own, do they?" Professor Colbert asked. "They've got to have someone
calling the shots. They've got to have a leader. This 'Dark Lord' of theirs."
He did finger-quotes.

The class exchanged uneasy looks.

"That brings us to today's Word."

Beside him, the curtain on the puppet-show theater thing
whisked aside, revealing a smooth blue field with The Word etched
on it in letters of white fire. Beneath that, more letters appeared.

Voldemort

As one, everybody but Harry reacted with the usual gasps
of horror, moans of dread, and squeals of dismay that the name engendered.

"Voldemort," Professor Colbert said forcefully, speaking
over the din. "Yes, I said it. I'll say it again. Voldemort."

Lavender Brown slumped forward in a dead faint.

"None of this 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named' or 'You-Know-Who'
crap for this wizard, thank you very much." Colbert jerked his thumb
toward his chest as he spoke. "Any name is fair game in my classroom."

On the blue field, Voldemort winked out and Jon
Stewart? winked in its place.

Colbert magnificently ignored it. "Lord Voldemort. Lord.
Like he inherited that title. Like he's some sort of hereditary nobleman
with an estate and thinks that makes him better than the rest of us."

Sir Benjamin Slade, though, is better than the
rest of us

"Absolutely," Colbert said, as if responding now to the
white-fire letters. "Sir Slade? Still waiting on that call." He held his
hand, thumb and pinkie finger extended, up beside his ear. "But who's going
to respect a guy named Voldemort? You know he only chose it because it
sounds kind of spooky."

Mort = Death

Most of the students were by now practically hyperventilating.
Some had plugged their ears, and a couple more had passed out cold on the
floor. Ron had gone the color of cottage cheese, while Malfoy was the furious
plum-purple of outrage.

Apparently oblivious to the effect he was having, the
professor said, "I mean, yes, he did need something with a little more
zing, a little more zazz, if he wanted to get anywhere with this Dark Lord
thing. The man's real name is Tom. Do you know any scary Toms?"

DeLay? asked the white letters.

"And his middle name is Marvolo," Colbert said. "Who would
be afraid of a guy named Marvolo?"

Is that supposed to be a Riddle?

"Sounds like a carnival illusionist. Step right up and
see the Marvelous Marvolo!"

I thought he was in the Lemony Snicket books

"No, that's Count Olaf," Colbert said. "Though he's a
coward, too. Not to mention a pervert. I don't know what the laws are like
in whatever make-believe world he comes from, but in my world, you
don't go around marrying fifteen-year-old orphans. Not even for the money.
Plotting to kill them, murdering their parents, that's understandable.
Reprehensible, but, in the villain scheme of things, understandable."

Tough luck, Harry

"Still, you've got to draw the line somewhere!" Colbert
said, pounding a fist on his desk for emphasis. "Pardon me if I happen
to draw mine at lusting after teenagers. No matter how hot they are."

Tough luck, all you dirty, dirty fangirls

"Which is about the only good thing we can say about this
spooky, scary Dark Lord. He may be a snake-talking mostly undead evil weirdo,
but at least he's not a lecherous snake-talking mostly undead evil
weirdo."

Eew

"And thank God for that. We don't want to have to worry
about there being a Mrs. Voldemort and a lot of little Voldemorts, do we?"

Though that Bellatrix chick has got it going on …

"Hey!" Professor Colbert cut in. "We are not even speculating
in that direction. I know there's a lot of bizarre 'shipping happening
out there, some of it too freaky even for me –"

Mirror, Blackbeak, Sockporn, Love at the Lake …

He raised his wand and shot a warning sidelong look at
the blue screen. "Are you finished?"

Are they?

"Moving right along. Let me hear you say it."

Vuh …

"Come on."

You-Know-Who?

"Don't get smart with me, mister."

Voldemort

"And that's the Word," Professor Colbert said with satisfaction.
"We'll be right back."

The curtains drew shut over the screen and the hated name,
etched there in its searing letters of white fire.

Harry wasn't the only one to turn to the dazed students
around him with his brow creased in utter bafflement. Something more seemed
needed here. He wasn't sure what, but the teacher was sitting there with
hands folded and eyebrows raised, waiting expectantly.

The class fidgeted nervously, still as shaken by repeated
exposures to the name of Voldemort as they might have been by repeated
slaps to the face. A few were in tears. Some were curled in fetal positions
under their seats.

Then, after a couple of false-start half movements, Dean
Thomas began to clap. A clap did not normally sound like there was a question
mark at the end, but these did. When Professor Colbert inclined his head
encouragingly, a few other students joined in. Then a few more. Until they
were all applauding, though looking at each other with numb, shocked eyes.

"No, no, really, that's not necessary," Professor Colbert
said, beaming benignly, after they had clapped for a solid two minutes.
"Moving right along …"

He whirled his chair and leveled a finger at them. His
expression changed in an instant, going from that benign beam to a sternness
so forbidding that it would have made Snape take a step back.

Hannah Abbot, who had only just stopped crying, uttered
a shrill squeak and hid her face against Ernie MacMillan's arm. Neville
moaned miserably. Ron mumbled something – "Bloody hell!" would have been
Harry's guess.

"If you're going to fight the evils that menace our society,"
Colbert barked, "you need to know what they are. And I'm here to tell you
… with the Threat-Down!"

A whooping alarm klaxon resounded through the dark room.
Blood-red pulsing lights flashed and flared. Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson
were clinging to each other like children in a carnival haunted house.
Hermione jumped and her quill skidded a jagged black scrawl across her
notes. Harry instinctively grabbed for his wand.

"Number Five," Professor Colbert said as the alarms and
flashes faded. He swept his own wand through the air, and a shimmering
numeral 5 appeared, floating like sparkling golden smoke in the gloom.

Realizing that they were not all about to be struck dead,
the students who had been on the edge of their seats, or on the verge of
fleeing the classroom altogether, eased back into their places.

The golden 5 dissolved and re-formed into the shape of
a creature somehow both squat and gangly, with overlarge ears and big soulful
eyes.

Rallied by her pet cause, Hermione's hand shot up again.
She didn't even wait to be called on before objecting, "But, Professor,
house-elves are horribly mistreated! It's tantamount to slave labor!"

"That's the best kind," he said. "And you're interrupting
again, Miss Granger. Yes, it's true that house-elves are unpaid. They get
no vacations, no benefits, and not much in the way of a retirement plan.
And they are the happiest, hardest-working, most uncomplaining busy-bees
you'll ever find."

"Only because they don't know any better!" cried Hermione.

"It's the little people who keep our society functioning,"
Colbert said, overriding her. "The house-elves, the goblins, even the tommyknockers.
Well, maybe not so much the tommyknockers. But the house-elves and the
goblins. Now, the goblins, they love their gold … but house-elves? That's
a different story. My house-elf, Jimmy, sleeps in a shoebox and wears a
toga made out of old newspapers and that's just the way he likes it. Isn't
that right, Jimmy?"

A small, abject figure began to creep dolefully out from
behind one of the bookcases, but Professor Colbert shoved it back out of
sight with one foot.

"If these Elfinistas get their way, though," he said,
"thousands of house-elves will be driven into unemployment out of the shame
of being expected to take payment for their work. What will become of them?
Who'll do the tidying? Are we supposed to outsource all our menial chores?
You really want to put good English house-elves on the street while some
unpaid grama-davata from India does your laundry and takes out your
trash?"

Hermione was positively aghast, and elbowed Harry as if
to make him say something when she was too apoplectic to speak. Harry shrugged
helplessly at her.

"Number Four," declared Colbert, evidently feeling that
he had gotten his point across and could now proceed. The golden-smoke
image dissolved and re-formed again, this time into a numeral 4. "Extreme
Splinching. I don't know what it is with kids today, but when I
was growing up, splinching was something to be avoided. Who wanted to leave
half of themselves behind while trying to get your Apparating license?
And to do it on purpose?"

The image that had followed the number 4 had been indecipherable
at first, but as Colbert explained, it suddenly made gruesome sense. Harry
felt his stomach churn, and wished he'd skipped breakfast. He barely heard
the rest of the speech about Extreme Splinching in his struggle to keep
from throwing up.

"Number Three … Dementors."

The temperature in the room seemed to plummet as the smoke
reshaped itself into the suggestion of an ominous cloaked-and-hooded creature
with one long, bony, grasping hand. Harry wasn't the only one, he saw in
that moment, half-tempted to draw his wand and blast it apart with a silvery
Patronus Charm.

"They were bad enough when they were the Azkaban guards,"
Professor Colbert said. "But now that they're on the loose? 'Nuff said."

The way this was going, Harry figured he could guess what
Number One was going to be. Like he needed a Threat-Down to tell him so.

"Number Two. Voldemort."

A flurry of shrieks erupted from the students. Like Harry,
they must have seen where this was headed and been trying to brace themselves,
but before they could, they got blindsided.

"Number Two? Voldemort? Number Two?" Harry didn't
know he was going to speak aloud until the words burst from his lips.

"That's what I said, and I'm sure I don't have to tell
you of all people why, Mr. Potter. You know better than any of us."

Harry sat there with his jaw hanging open. It wasn't Voldemort
being
on the Threat-Down that surprised him. It was … Voldemort … placing second?

"And last but by no means least," Professor Colbert said,
into a sudden silence that was filled with apprehensive dread, "Number
One on the Threat-Down ..."

Neville squeezed his eyes shut. Hannah hid her face again.
Dean and Parvati held their breath. Seamus' knuckles had gone white as
chalk. Harry tried to think of what in the world could possibly be worse
than Voldemort, the Dark wizard who had terrorized the entire magical community
for so many years and been responsible for the deaths of so many people
– Harry's own parents among them.

Seeing that he had their entire horrorstruck attention,
Colbert nodded gravely around at the students. "Bugbears."

**

"Bugbears?" Harry said later, incredulous, as they crowded
into the Great Hall for lunch. "He's … he's joking, right?"

"Well, he did make them sound like a serious threat,"
Hermione said. "I mean, I've read about them, of course, but I never thought
…"

"Bloody hell," Ron said. "It's rubbish, that's what it
is. Bugbears? He's got a thing about bears, that bloke. Did you hear him
going on about owlbears, too?"

"What's this about owlbears?" came a gruff, familiar voice
from behind them. They turned to see Hagrid, his beard a bushy tangle spilling
down the front of his moleskin overcoat. "Who's been tellin' yer about
owlbears?"

Hermione rolled her eyes, as if he was stupid even for
asking. Harry supposed she was probably right. To Hagrid's way of thinking,
dragons and giant spiders made good pets, and the most deadly and ferocious
creatures in the world were only "able ter look after themselves all right,"
as if being able to devour a person in two chomps was as much a defense
mechanism as a hedgehog's spines.

But the color drained from Hagrid's ruddy face. "Bugbears?"
he whispered, then furtively scanned the room as if afraid something might
be sneaking up on him. "Ye want ter watch what yer sayin' about bugbears,
Harry. Monsters, that lot. I din' used ter think they was so bad, mind
ye, but …"

"But what?" Harry asked.

Hagrid gruffly shook his big head, and hurried off without
another word.

**

From talk heard around the school and in the Gryffindor
common room over the next couple of days, Harry, Ron and Hermione determined
that their reaction to Professor Colbert was pretty much the same as everyone
else's.

"He brought Madame Hooch in as a special guest to speak
to our class," Ginny reported at breakfast one morning. "But instead of
asking us to welcome her, he jumped up from his desk and ran around the
room with his arms in the air, like he had just won the Quidditch World
Cup, waiting for us all to cheer."

Colin Creevey, who was in Ginny's year, bobbed his head
enthusiastically. "They nearly got in a fight about the Welsh league's
performance-enhancing spells scandal."

"What does any of that have to do with Defense Against
the Dark Arts?" Hermione asked huffily.

"That's nothing," Lee Jordan said, leaning across the
table. "With us, he brought out a list of famous witches and wizards through
history, and made us shout out whether we thought they should be brought
back, or left dead! No one knew what to say when he got to Nicholas Flamel,
though."

"My gran is furious he's our new teacher," Neville said,
glancing around as if he expected a Howler from that formidable lady to
arrive any minute. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "She's on notice,
my gran, you see."

"What'd she do?" Ginny asked, eyes wide.

"Don't know," Neville said. "Gran won't tell me, and when
I got up the nerve to ask Professor Colbert after class, all he'd say was
that she knows why."

Luna Lovegood had drifted over from the Ravenclaw table.
"He gave my father a Tip of the Hat," she said. "The Quibbler, my
father's paper, always gives proper attribution to quotes. Unlike
the Daily Prophet, which got a big Wag of the Finger for not mentioning
him in their article on Truthiness. It serves them right, too."

**

"I've prepared a little something special for today,"
Professor Colbert said. "It's time for a segment I like to call 'Better
Know a Death-Eater.'"

Knocked back into his seat, Malfoy made a series of muffled
grunts and bleats as he tried unsuccessfully to peel the gag off.

Ignoring him, Colbert swept grandly toward the table that
held a basin Harry recognized as a Pensieve. "As I was saying, the fightin'
Malfoys! An ultra-elitist, super-snobby clan of purebloods who can trace
their lineage back for several centuries, the Malfoys have produced many
of history's top Dark wizards. Who can forget Maleficent Malfoy, the sorceress
responsible for the Great Spinning Wheel Fires of the late 1200's?"

Hermione raised her hand, and when he nodded, she said,
"There was also Osmund Malfoy, the Butcher of Birkhead. And Ferrex Malfoy,
inventor of the Self-Sharpening Guillotine. And Ardea Malfoy, who murdered
nine of her husbands –"

"Mmmmrrrff!" Malfoy said.

Still ignoring him, Colbert said, "Very good, Miss Granger;
I think they get the idea. Ten points for your House, whichever one that
is. So, given the family history, it was no surprise when one of their
number rose to prominence among Voldemort's Death-Eaters."

Professor Colbert touched the tip of his wand to the silvery,
rippling surface of the Pensieve. He stirred it around while he spoke,
then raised the wand. A filament of the silvery stuff trailed after it,
hanging in the air like a vapor. Colbert spun it into a circle, which first
clouded and then cleared, like fog evaporating off a windowpane.

"I recently sat down to talk with current patriarch-ex-patriate
Lucius Malfoy at his cell in Azkaban Prison," he said.

Abruptly, Malfoy quit his struggles and sat still, eyes
bulging.

Within that floating window, a scene appeared. It showed
a dismal dungeon chamber, illuminated by the flickering sputter of candlelight.
The floor was strewn with damp straw, the stone walls clammy with condensation.
Spiders scurried. Rats scuttled. From somewhere came the despairing howls
of tortured prisoners.

Two straight-backed wooden chairs faced each other in
the center of the cell. In one sat Professor Colbert, trim and dapper in
crisp black robes with a bold crimson ascot. In the other sat a man … and
it took Harry several seconds to convince himself that yes, that really
was
Lucius Malfoy.

He remembered a commanding, imposing figure, well-groomed
and stylishly dressed. Not this haggard husk, clad in rags almost as shabby
as the old tea-towel that had been the only garment of the Malfoys' former
house-elf, Dobby. Dirty bone-colored blond hair fell in lank straggles
around a sunken, unshaved, skull-like face.

Only the eyes were the same … Lucius Malfoy's pale eyes,
burning with hate, like diamonds set on fire.

"Mister Malfoy," the Colbert in the scene said, with easy
confidence. "Thanks for talking with me."